Getting the facts
By Jeannette | February 16, 2017
Beware, this might turn into a rant!
I’ve been having to have monthly blood tests to check my liver function as I’m been on some totally yucky tablets for my nails. They work though but, as getting blood out of me is troublesome, it’s not been pleasant.
So, last week I went along and also asked if I could have my iron levels checked as I’d fainted two days before.
The nurse said something along the lines of “it might be your cholesterol, you have high cholestrol” which was news to me as, since my last test for that three years ago, no one had said anything. She then said “the doctor will definitely want to see you, its too high”.
So, blood eventually taken and I’ve worried ever since. Wondering why no one had said anything in the times I’d seen a doctor since, because surely that sort of thing would be flagged up, wouldn’t it, a bit like smear tests?
Fast forward a week and a telephone conversation with a doctor and my cholesterol levels are fine, still the same level as 3 years ago BUT I have a high level of good cholesterol and the doctor is perfectly happy with that.
So that explains why no one mentioned it but why did the nurse take it upon herself to take look at the figure without the other details?
And when I phoned yesterday for the results, on the blood test results line, the person manning the phone could not give me any detail, in fact she gave me a totally different numerical result to the one told by the doctor today!!!
Not wishing to moan about the wonderful service the NHS generally provides but if the nurse had read things properly, I’d have saved myself over a week of worry.
Which would have been gladly avoided cos I have plenty else I can worry my head about!!!
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